Category: Marketing Automation

When you’re sifting through your News Feed, what tends to catch your attention? More likely than not, it’s YouTube videos, pictures, animated GIFs, and other visual content, right?
While text-based content is always important when seeking answers to a question, creating visuals such as infographics, charts, graphs, animated GIFs, and other shareable images can do wonders for catching your readers’ attention and enhancing your article or report.

I know what you might be thinking: “I don’t know how to design awesome visuals. I’m not creative.”
Hi. I’m Bethany, and I will be the first to tell you that I’m not naturally artistic. And yet, I found a strength in data visualization at HubSpot, where I’ve spent most of my days creating infographics and other visuals for blog posts.
So, while I wouldn’t say I’m naturally artistic, I have learned how to create compelling visual content. So can you.

And you can do this by learning color theory. Consider this your introductory course, and we’ll be covering the following topics:

What Is Color Theory?
Why Is Color Theory Important in Web Design?
Color Theory 101
Additive & Subtractive Color Theory
The Meaning of Color
The Seven Color Schemes
How to Choose a Color Scheme
Color Tools

What is color theory?
Color theory is the basis for the primary rules and guidelines that surround color and its use in creating aesthetically pleasing visuals. By understanding color theory basics, you can begin to parse the logical structure of color for yourself to create and use color palettes more strategically. The result means evoking a particular emotion, vibe, or aesthetic.

While there are many tools out there to help even the most inartistic of us to create compelling visuals, graphic design tasks require a little more background knowledge on design principles.
Take selecting the right color combination, for instance. It’s something that might seem easy at first but when you’re staring down a color wheel, you’re going to wish you had some information on what you’re looking at. Understanding how colors work together, the impact they can have on mood and emotion, and how they change the look and feel of your website is critical to help you stand out from the crowd — for the right reasons.
From effective CTAs to sales conversions and marketing efforts, the right color choice can highlight specific sections of your website, make it easier for users to navigate, or give them a sense of familiarity from the first moment they click through.
But it’s not enough to simply select colors and hope for the best — from color theory to moods and schemes, finding the right HTML color codes, and identifying web-accessible colors for products and websites, the more you know about using color, the better your chances are for success.
Read on for our designer’s guide to color theory, color wheels, and color schemes for your site.

Color Theory 101
Let’s first go back to high school art class to discuss the basics of color.
Remember hearing about primary, secondary, and tertiary colors? They’re pretty important if you want to understand, well, everything else about color.

Primary Colors
Primary colors are those you can’t create by combining two or more other colors together. They’re a lot like prime numbers, which can’t be created by multiplying two other numbers together.
There are three primary colors:

Red
Yellow
Blue

Think of primary colors as your parent colors, anchoring your design in a general color scheme. Any one or combination of these colors can give your brand guardrails when you move to explore other shades, tones, and tints (we’ll talk about those in just a minute).
When designing or even painting with primary colors, don’t feel restricted to just the three primary colors listed above. Orange isn’t a primary color, for example, but brands can certainly use orange as their dominant color (as we at HubSpot know this quite well).
Knowing which primary colors create orange is your ticket to identifying colors that might go well with orange — given the right shade, tone, or tint. This brings us to our next type of color …
Secondary Colors
Secondary colors are the colors that are formed by combining any two of the three primary colors listed above. Check out the color theory model above — see how each secondary color is supported by two of the three primary colors?
There are three secondary colors: orange, purple, and green. You can create each one using two of the three primary colors. Here are the general rules of secondary color creation:

Red + Yellow = Orange

Blue + Red = Purple

Yellow + Blue = Green

Keep in mind that the color mixtures above only work if you use the purest form of each primary color. This pure form is known as a color’s hue, and you’ll see how these hues compare to the variants underneath each color in the color wheel below.
Tertiary Colors
Tertiary colors are created when you mix a primary color with a secondary color.
From here, color gets a little more complicated, and if you want to learn how the experts choose color in their design, you’ve got to first understand all the other components of color.
The most important component of tertiary colors is that not every primary color can match with a secondary color to create a tertiary color. For example, red can’t mix in harmony with green, and blue can’t mix in harmony with orange — both mixtures would result in a slightly brown color (unless of course, that’s what you’re looking for).
Instead, tertiary colors are created when a primary color mixes with a secondary color that comes next to it on the color wheel below. There are six tertiary colors that fit this requirement:

Red + Purple = Red-Purple (magenta)
Red + Orange = Red-Orange (vermillion)
Blue + Purple = Blue-Purple (violet)
Blue + Green = Blue-Green (teal)
Yellow + Orange = Yellow-Orange (amber)
Yellow + Green = Yellow-Green (chartreuse)

The Color Theory Wheel
Okay, great. So now you know what the “main” colors are, but you and I both know that choosing color combinations, especially on a computer, involves a much wider range than 12 basic colors.
This is the impetus behind the color wheel, a circle graph that charts each primary, secondary, and tertiary color — as well as their respective hues, tints, tones, and shades. Visualizing colors in this way helps you choose color schemes by showing you how each color relates to the color that comes next to it on a rainbow color scale. (As you probably know, the colors of a rainbow, in order, are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.)

When choosing colors for a color scheme, the color wheel gives you opportunities to create brighter, lighter, softer, and darker colors by mixing white, black, and gray with the original colors. These mixes create the color variants described below:
Hue
Hue is pretty much synonymous with what we actually mean when we said the word “color.” All of the primary and secondary colors, for instance, are “hues.”
Hues are important to remember when combining two primary colors to create a secondary color. If you don’t use the hues of the two primary colors you’re mixing together, you won’t generate the hue of the secondary color. This is because a hue has the fewest other colors inside it. By mixing two primary colors that carry other tints, tones, and shades inside them, you’re technically adding more than two colors to the mixture — making your final color dependent on the compatibility of more than two colors.
If you were to mix the hues of red and blue together, for instance, you’d get purple, right? But mix a tint of red with the hue of blue, and you’ll get a slightly tinted purple in return.
Shade
You may recognize the term “shade” because it’s used quite often to refer to light and dark versions of the same hue. But actually, a shade is technically the color that you get when you add black to any given hue. The various “shades” just refer to how much black you’re adding.
Tint
A tint is the opposite of a shade, but people don’t often distinguish between a color’s shade and a color’s tint. You get a different tint when you add white to a color. So, a color can have a range of both shades and tints.
Tone (or Saturation)
You can also add both white and black to a color to create a tone. Tone and saturation essentially mean the same thing, but most people will use saturation if they’re talking about colors being created for digital images. Tone will be used more often for painting.
With the basics covered, let’s dive into something a little more complicated — like additive and subtractive color theory.

Additive & Subtractive Color Theory
If you’ve ever played around with color on any computer program, you’ve probably seen a module that listed RGB or CMYK colors with some numbers next to the letters.
Ever wondered what those letters mean?
CMYK
CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Key (Black). Those also happen to be the colors listed on your ink cartridges for your printer. That’s no coincidence.
CMYK is the subtractive color model. It’s called that because you have to subtract colors to get to white. That means the opposite is true — the more colors you add, the closer you get to black. Confusing, right?

Think about printing on a piece of paper. When you first put a sheet in the printer, you’re typically printing on a white piece of paper. By adding color, you’re blocking the white wavelengths from getting through.
Then, let’s say you were to put that printed piece of paper back into the printer, and print something on it again. You’ll notice the areas that have been printed on twice will have colors closer to black.
I find it easier to think about CMYK in terms of its corresponding numbers. CMYK works on a scale of 0 to 100. If C=100, M=100, Y=100, and K=100, you end up with black. But, if all four colors equal 0, you end up with true white.
RGB
RGB color models, on the other hand, are designed for electronic displays, including computers.
RGB stands for Red, Green, Blue, and is based on the additive color model of light waves. This means, the more color you add, the closer you get to white. For computers, RGB is created using scales from 0 to 255. So, black would be R=0, G=0, and B=0. White would be R=255, G=255, and B=255.

When you’re creating color on a computer, your color module will usually list both RGB and CMYK numbers. In practice, you can use either one to find colors, and the other color model will adjust accordingly.
However, many web programs will only give you the RGB values or a HEX code (the code assigned to color for CSS and HTML). So, if you’re designing digital images or for web design, RGB is probably your best bet for choosing colors.

You can always convert the design to CMYK and make adjustments should you ever need it for printed materials.
The Meaning of Color
Along with varying visual impact, different colors also carry different emotional symbolism.

Red — typically associated with power, passion, or energy, and can help encourage action on your site
Orange — joy and enthusiasm, making it a good choice for positive messaging
Yellow — happiness and intellect, but be wary of overuse
Green — often connected to growth or ambition, green can help give the sense that your brand is on the rise
Blue — tranquility and confidence, depending on the shade — lighter shades provide a sense of peace, darker colors are more confident
Purple — luxury or creativity, especially when used deliberately and sparingly on your site
Black — power and mystery, and using this color can help create necessary negative space
White — safety and innocence, making it a great choice to help streamline your site

Worth noting? Different audiences may perceive colors differently. The meanings listed above are common for North American audiences, but if your brand moves into other parts of the world, it’s a good idea to research how users will perceive particular colors. For example, while red typically symbolizes passion or power in the United States, it’s considered a color of mourning in South Africa.
While it’s possible to create your website using a combination of every color under the rainbow, chances are the final product won’t look great. Thankfully, color experts and designers have identified seven common color schemes to help jumpstart your creative process.
Let’s examine each in more detail.
1. Monochromatic
Monochromatic color schemes use a single color with varying shades and tints to produce a consistent look and feel. Although it lacks color contrast, it often ends up looking very clean and polished. It also allows you to easily change the darkness and lightness of your colors.

Monochromatic color schemes are often used for charts and graphs when creating high contrast isn’t necessary.
Check out all the monochromatic colors that fall under the red hue, a primary color.

2. Analogous
Analogous color schemes are formed by pairing one main color with the two colors directly next to it on the color wheel. You can also add two additional colors (which are found next to the two outside colors) if you want to use a five-color scheme instead of just three colors.

Analogous structures do not create themes with high contrasting colors, so they’re typically used to create a softer, less contrasting design. For example, you could use an analogous structure to create a color scheme with autumn or spring colors.
This color scheme is great for creating warmer (red, oranges, and yellows) or cooler (purples, blues, and greens) color palettes like the one below.

Analogous schemes are often used to design images rather than infographics or bar charts as all of the elements blend together nicely.
3. Complementary
You may have guessed it, but a complementary color scheme is based on the use of two colors directly across from each other on the color wheel and relevant tints of those colors.

The complementary color scheme provides the greatest amount of color contrast. Because of this, you should be careful about how you use the complementary colors in a scheme.
It’s best to use one color predominantly and use the second color as accents in your design. The complementary color scheme is also great for charts and graphs. High contrast helps you highlight important points and takeaways.

4. Split Complementary
A split complementary scheme includes one dominant color and the two colors directly adjacent to the dominant color’s complement. This creates a more nuanced color palette than a complementary color scheme while still retaining the benefits of contrasting colors.

The split complementary color scheme can be difficult to balance because unlike analogous or monochromatic color schemes, the colors used all provide contrast (similar to the complementary scheme).
The positive and negative aspect of the split complementary color model is that you can use any two colors in the scheme and get great contrast … but that also means it can also be tricky to find the right balance between the colors. As a result, you may end up playing around with this one a bit more to find the right combination of contrast.

5. Triadic
Triadic color schemes offer high contrasting color schemes while retaining the same tone. Triadic color schemes are created by choosing three colors that are equally placed in lines around the color wheel.

Triad color schemes are useful for creating high contrast between each color in a design, but they can also seem overpowering if all of your colors are chosen on the same point in a line around the color wheel.
To subdue some of your colors in a triadic scheme, you can choose one dominant color and use the others sparingly, or simply subdue the other two colors by choosing a softer tint.
The triadic color scheme looks great in graphics like bar or pie charts because it offers the contrast you need to create comparisons.

6. Square
The square color scheme uses four colors equidistant from each other on the color wheel to create a square or diamond shape. While this evenly-spaced color scheme provides substantial contrast to your design, it’s a good idea to select one dominant color rather than trying to balance all four.

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Square color schemes are great for creating interest across your web designs. Not sure where to start? Pick your favorite color and work from there to see if this scheme suits your brand or website. It’s also a good idea to try square schemes against both black and white backgrounds to find the best fit.
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7. Rectangle
Also called the tetradic color scheme, the rectangle approach is similar to its square counterpart but offers a more subtle approach to color selection. 

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As you can see in the diagram above, while the blue and red shades are quite bold, the green and orange on the other side of the rectangle are more muted, in turn helping the bolder shades stand out.

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No matter which color scheme you choose, keep in mind what your graphic needs. If you need to create contrast, then choose a color scheme that gives you that. On the other hand, if you just need to find the best “versions” of certain colors, then play around with the monochromatic color scheme to find the perfect shades and tints.

Remember, if you build a color scheme with five colors, that doesn’t mean you have to use all five. Sometimes just choosing two colors from a color scheme looks much better than cramming all five colors together in one graphic.
1. Prioritize the user experience, first.
Before you add color to your website, app, product, or packaging, get the basic design downpat in greyscale.
This lets you focus on what matters most: User experience. Instead of focusing on the color scheme of your overall site or the hue of specific buttons or links, make sure everything works like it’s supposed to. Make sure links aren’t broken, product pages are up-to-date and email opt-ins are ready to go.
Here’s why: Even the best-looking website or product with perfect color selection won’t be enough to keep visitors if they can’t find what they’re looking for.
2. Leverage natural inspiration.
Once your site operations are solid, it’s time to start selecting colors.
Not sure what looks good? Take a look outside. Nature is the best example of colors that complement each other — from the green stems and bright blooms of flowering plants to azure skies and white clouds, you can’t go wrong pulling context from natural colors and combinations.
3. Set a mood for your color scheme.
With a few color choices in mind, consider the mood you want your color scheme to set. If passion and energy are your priorities, lean more toward red or brighter yellows. If you’re looking to create a feeling of peace or tranquility, trend toward lighter blues and greens.
It’s also worth thinking negatively. This is because negative space — in either black or white — can help keep your design from feeling too cluttered with color.
4. Consider color context.
It’s also worth considering how colors are perceived in contrast.
In the image below, the middle of each of the circles is the same size, shape, and color. The only thing that changes is the background color.
Yet, the middle circles appear softer or brighter depending on the contrasting color behind it. You may even notice movement or depth changes just based on one color change.

This is because the way in which we use two colors together changes how we perceive it. So, when you’re choosing colors for your graphic designs, think about how much contrast you want throughout the design.
For instance, if you were creating a simple bar chart, would you want a dark background with dark bars? Probably not. You’d most likely want to create a contrast between your bars and the background itself since you want your viewers to focus on the bars, not the background.
5. Refer to your color wheel.
Next, consider your color wheel and the schemes mentioned above. Select a few different color combinations using schemes such as monochrome, complementary, and triad to see what stands out.
Here, the goal isn’t to find exactly the right colors on the first try and create the perfect design, but rather to get a sense of which scheme naturally resonates with your personal perception and the look of your site.
You may also find that schemes you select that look good in theory don’t work with your site design. This is part of the process — trial and error will help you find the color palette that both highlights your content and improves the user experience.
6. Use the 60-30-10 rule.
Often used in home design, the 60-30-10 rule is also useful for website or app design. The idea here is to use three colors: A main color for 60% of your design, a secondary color for 30% of your design and an accent color for the last 10%.
While these aren’t hard-and-fast numbers, they help give a sense of proportion and balance to your site by providing a primary color with secondary and accent colors that all work together.
7. Draft multiple designs.
Draft and apply multiple color designs to your website and see which one(s) stand out. Then, take a step back, wait a few days and check again to see if your favorites have changed.
Here’s why: While many designers go in with a vision of what they want to see and what looks good, the finished product often differs on digital screens that physical color wheels — what seemed like a perfect complement or an ideal color pop may end up looking drab or dated.
Don’t be afraid to draft, review, draft again and throw out what doesn’t work — color, like website creation, is a constantly-evolving art form.

Put simply? Practice makes perfect. The more you play with color and practice design, the better you get. No one creates their masterpiece the first time around.
Color Tools
There’s been a lot of theory and practical information for actually understanding which colors go best together and why. But when it comes down to the actual task of choosing colors while you’re designing, it’s always a great idea to have tools to help you actually do the work quickly and easily.
Luckily, there are a number of tools to help you find and choose colors for your designs.
Adobe Color
One of my favorite color tools to use while I’m designing anything — whether it’s an infographic or just a pie chart — is Adobe Color (previously Adobe Kuler).
This free online tool allows you to quickly build color schemes based on the color structures that were explained earlier in this post. Once you’ve chosen the colors in the scheme you’d like, you can copy and paste the HEX or RGB codes into whatever program you’re using.
It also features hundreds of premade color schemes for you to explore and use in your own designs. If you’re an Adobe user, you can easily save your themes to your account.

Illustrator Color Guide
I spend a lot of time in Adobe Illustrator, and one of my most-used features is the color guide. The color guide allows you to choose one color, and it will automatically generate a five-color scheme for you. It will also give you a range of tints and shades for each color in the scheme.
If you switch your main color, the color guide will switch the corresponding colors in that scheme. So if you’ve chosen a complementary color scheme with the main color of blue, once you switch your main color to red, the complementary color will also switch from orange to green.
Like Adobe Color, the color guide has a number of preset modes to choose the kind of color scheme you want. This helps you pick the right color scheme style within the program you’re already using.
After you’ve created the color scheme that you want, you can save that scheme in the “Color Themes” module for you to use throughout your project or in the future.

Preset Color Guides
If you’re not an Adobe user, you’ve probably used Microsoft Office products at least once. All of the Office products have preset colors that you can use and play around with to create color schemes. PowerPoint also has a number of color scheme presets that you can use to draw inspiration for your designs.
Where the color schemes are located in PowerPoint will depend on which version you use, but once you find the color “themes” of your document, you can open up the preferences and locate the RGB and HEX codes for the colors used.
You can then copy and paste those codes to be used in whatever program you’re using to do your design work.

Finding the Right Color Scheme
There’s a lot of theory in this post, I know. But when it comes to choosing colors, understanding the theory behind color can do wonders for how you actually use color. This can make creating branded visuals easy, especially when using design templates where you can customize colors.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in October 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

 

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Are all MA products email unique (as in there is only allowed 1 copy of an email in the whole system). The organization I am working with uses a CRM that allows for multiple members to use the same email. As well, their members tend to change emails frequently throughout the year. They have had a hard time finding a MA system that can handle these requirements. Specifically, members sharing emails and members changing emails frequently but retaining a history of activities as a single member. Thoughts?
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Every day there’s something new on social media.
Recently, Twitter introduced Twitter Blue, a premium subscription-based version of its platform.

TikTok took the social media world by storm back in 2020 and still remains the most downloaded app of 2021, according to Social Media Today. Instagram is regularly adding new features to its platform, recently testing a new affiliate tool for influencers.
The question is, how are these changes impacting how consumers behave online? Are users moving away from Facebook?
Let’s see what the data says and what it means for brands.
We surveyed 301 people and asked, “Which social media platform do you spend the most time on each week?” The response was kind of surprising.

Despite YouTube’s steady growth over the past year and the rise of TikTok and Clubhouse, Facebook remains the top social media platform. YouTube follows, with the gap between the platform and Facebook much smaller in larger surveys.
So, what does this information really mean?
Well, in a broad sense, it means you should consider having a presence on these platforms. However, don’t delete your Instagram account just yet – better yet, don’t delete it at all.
I’ll explain why in the next section.
Should brands limit their efforts to the most popular platforms?
There’s no single, clear-cut answer to this… but typically, no.
While most consumers may spend most of their time on Facebook and YouTube, that doesn’t mean you should dedicate all your efforts entirely to those platforms.
Why? That may not be where your audience lives.
Generality is the enemy of marketing. Imagine running a social media ad that targets everyone. Or having a target audience comprising all of Gen Z.
This sort of one-size-fits-all isn’t conducive to your brand’s growth. In fact, it is likely keeping you from making progress, as you waste time and resources on broad strategies that may not work for your specific market.
It’s like going to a party and only getting an address for the neighborhood. Sure, you could drive around and knock on every door until you find the right one, but by that point, you might be tired, hungry, and out of gas.
When you zero in on a specific audience and strategy, you can gain more valuable insights and get a higher return on investment.
Data, just like the one above, should be used as a general guide to understand consumer behavior. However, it shouldn’t dictate your entire strategy. Your own consumer data and user persona(s) should.
For instance, let’s say you’ve discovered through market research that your audience enjoys consuming information mostly through blogs and podcasts. That’s a good indicator of where you should focus your efforts. In a few years, that data may change, in which case, your team should be flexible and move to where your audience is going.
Here’s what you should consider when determining where to direct your efforts:

Where your audience lives
The type of content you’ll be creating
The channel that converts the best

There are a few ways to figure out where your audience “hangs out” online. First, you can check the demographics by platform – this will give you a general idea of the audience.
For instance, TikTok mostly caters to a younger audience between 10 to 29 years old while most Instagram users are between 18 to 34 years old.
You can also reach out to your target audience directly through polls and survey to find out where they spend their time. In addition, look to your competitors.
See where they’re focusing their efforts and if they are successful, that may be a good indication of where you should be. Like when you’re not sure you went to the right place but see someone you know parking and you can let out a sigh of relief.
Next is the type of content you’ll be creating.
Say your audience enjoys video content the most (think webinars, lives, video tutorials). In this case, your audience would be well suited for YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, all of which have video editing and publishing features. You can then repurpose your content for each platform.
Another factor to consider is how each channel is contributing to your goals. This is where the importance of data comes in.
You may be posting every day on TikTok and find that the rare times you post on Facebook, you get much higher engagement and conversion rates. While there could be several reasons for this, you may want to redirect your attention to Facebook as it is providing the best return on investment.
Next, we’ll cover what software can help you keep track of your social media data.
Top Social Media Analytics Software
1. HubSpot

With HubSpot’s social media management software, you can track your social strategy from beginning to end.

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With a user-friendly dashboard, you can see exactly how your published posts are performing, which channels are bringing traffic to your website and generating leads, and more.
You can also filter your reports by campaign, account, and date range so you can narrow down the exact information you’re looking for.
In addition, HubSpot’s social media software allows you to:

Schedule posts.
See how your competitors measure up.
Track and monitor conversations surrounding your brand on every platform.
Export and analyze relevant reports.

The social media tool is available within HubSpot’s all-in-one CRM platform for mid- to large-size businesses.
2. HootSuite

HootSuite empowers your team to make decisions quickly with real-time data on your social strategy.

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The social media software takes some of the guesswork out so that you can focus on the most important insights. With customizable dashboards, you can also get a quick overview of your key metrics and identify what’s driving traffic and sales.
Ranging from $49/month to custom pricing for enterprise-level businesses, you can find a plan that meets your needs and is scalable.
3. Sprout Social

If you have multiple social channels running at full speed and you’re overwhelmed with the data, Sprout Social can help.

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The platform helps you manage your data and create ready-to-go reports to share with stakeholders.
In addition, you can use competitive intelligence to benchmark your performance and make informed decisions that will promote your brand’s growth.
Sprout Social’s pricing is based on a subscription model and ranges from $99 to $249 a month.
Now that you know where consumers spend their time online, the real work begins. Experiment with various strategies to see what resonates best with your audience, always using data and your user personas to inform your decisions.

This tutorial including examples is also available in this Public spreadsheet I’m sharing with you my secrets when I have a list of contact I want to convert into leads. I broke down the process into 4 stages: scrape, clean, enrich, engage.
In this example I scraped (copied from a webpage) the best performing CEOs from HBR. I used the native IMPORTHTML method The data is often coming not cleaned – I made sure it is clean enough so addons can work with it Enrich – at this point I can search Linkedin 1 by 1 and copy to the sheet. I love my personal time so I used the “Linkedin Bulk Search” addon and got the linkedin profiles together with images Engage – now we can again go 1 by 1 and sent a personal message or use on of the linkedin automation tools to approach (use with caution!). Another option is to use an addon like “hunter” to get the email and send a cold email
Note – when outreaching always remember to send a message with high value and respect the other person boundaries
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Hi Everyone, Ifiok Nkem has Launch his new product ADA Bundle on June 19th. Ifiok Nkemis known for creating best product in Digital Marketing space. Now he Launch ADA Bundle one of the best useful app for website owners. ADA Bundle is the first of its kind “all-in-one” SaaS platform that helps website owners improve their website accessibility in minutes and become ADA compliant. It comes with a full-blown Lead Generation App that finds Websites that are not yet compliant, and then generates an accessibility report you can use to close clients on the go. Checkout my Full Review and Demo with my Awesome Bonuses https://youtu.be/6Qww1CpUtrc
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I’m a realtor and it’s common knowledge that a lot of realtors don’t like to make phone calls or outbound prospect, which is totally crazy to me. But this is the truth. So and me and two realtor friends built an automated lead follow up platform for agents and mortgage lenders. It has prebuilt campaigns with ringless voicemail recorded by the user, text and emails for instant lead engagement and long-term nurture. You can use the prebuilt templates or create a campaign of your own and then simply upload a CSV file and broadcast a campaign or seamlessly and instantly integrate through Zappier or email parsing with any new leads come in to your website or web forms. It works particularly well with Facebook leads. We’re thinking this could also help other sales people besides real estate agents. Thoughts?
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Ever see those cool 360-degree cameras on red carpets at award shows?
Someone famous will stand in the middle and several cameras positioned all around will simultaneously capture pictures of the star, creating a spectacular image that gives you a 360 view of the person.

Now, imagine if you could do that with your target audience? Capture them from all angles as they interact with your brand. With a single customer view, you can.
The issue is, many businesses struggle to know where to start.
At the end of this article, you’ll understand what a single customer view is and how to create one for your brand.
A single customer view combines data from a consumer’s behavior on web and email, social media activity, demographics, interactions with customer service, and purchase history.
Let’s go through an example of an interaction between a consumer and a brand.
A consumer, let’s call her Jazmyn, discovers a brand on Instagram. Jazmyn visits the brand’s website through Instagram and downloads a free offer. Said brand adds Jazmyn to an email list and she starts receiving nurturing emails.
After months of no interactions, Jazmyn rediscovers the brand and makes a purchase. A month after that, she calls customer service regarding an issue with her product.
In just a few months, Jazmyn has interacted with at least three departments within the company: marketing, sales, and customer service. In many businesses, every department tracks data using its own system.
For instance, sales teams often use customer relationship management (CRM) software to track their interactions with clients and prospects while marketing teams use marketing platforms and automation tools to generate leads.
This creates huge data gaps, making it difficult to understand how a user is behaving over an extended period of time beyond a single vertical. It can also lead to duplicate information, leading to dirty data.
For instance, Jazmyn might receive ads for products she’s already purchased. Or she may get a call from customer service asking about a product she’s already reviewed via email.
Having a single customer view allows organizations to build personalized interactions with consumers, based on their current stage in the customer lifecycle. This creates a better customer experience, stronger brand loyalty, and better retention rates.
When you know where your target audience is, you can make enticing offers based on their current needs. It’s personalization at its best.
Benefits of a Single Customer View
When you invest in a platform with a single customer view, you:

Have cleaner data – With an integrated system, you remove information silos, which often cause data duplication.

Gather better insights – When you have an accurate map of the customer journey, you can better understand how your campaigns are performing and identify areas of improvement.

Assign proper credit to the right channels – Proper attribution is a major issue when it comes to audience tracking. With an SCV, you can identify the best and worst-performing channels for future campaigns.

1. Align your data owners and your KPIs.
The first step in creating an SCV is aligning all your data owners across your organization.
It’s important to align your teams early on key targets and key progress indicators. This keeps everyone on the same page and striving toward the same goal.
So, although everyone will be working on different sections, they’ll all be contributing to the same objective. This is key in keeping everyone in the same mindset and easing the transition to a data-driven approach.
Your data owners will serve as liaisons between IT and your team, enforcing governance standards and supplying IT with the access they need.
During this process, your IT team will be instrumental, as they will need to consolidate data from multiple systems and sources.
2. Find the right tech.
The next step is finding a platform with the capabilities to support your company’s needs.
Key features to consider when searching for a platform include:

Usability and accessibility of software
CRM Integration
Data quality tools
Automation

You’ll also want to consider the size of your company and the scalability of the software. all-in-one CRM platform like HubSpot, which combines sales, marketing, customer service data to support a holistic customer experience.
3. Hire data managers.
Depending on your company size, you may want to onboard roles dedicated to data, such as data miners, data analysts, and data migration specialists.
The process of migrating data is a costly and time-consuming one that you may not be equipped for. Instead, hire experts with the knowledge and experience to do it right.
They will be essential not only during the initial building phase but also as you grow your customer base.
4. Sort and integrate all data from your legacy systems.
If you’re an established brand with a ton of scattered data, you’ll need to sort through your systems.
Start by conducting an audit of your data quality. From there, clean your data so you can start integrating it with your other systems, including:

Your data warehouse
Your point-of-sale systems
Your marketing automation systems
Your call center systems

5. Set your data governance strategy.
As you’re in the process of cleaning out old data, you’ll need a new system for new, incoming data.
This is where your data governance standards come into play. They serve as operating guidelines for retrieving, storing, and processing data.
You may wonder, what’s the difference between a data management strategy and a data governance strategy? The former refers to the actions you take to fulfill the guidelines outlined in your governance strategy.
To learn about how to develop a governance strategy, click here.
6. Test your processes.
The last step in this process is testing your new centralized system.
To ensure that your new environment works (i.e., that the data linkage is complete), some test data will need to be used to ensure the data is gathered, stored, and reported correctly on your platform.
This will likely be an ongoing process as your business scales and you implement new touchpoints.
The earlier your team can implement a single customer view framework, the better equipped you will be to serve your target audience. While the process can be expensive and time-consuming, it’s a worthwhile investment that will be instrumental in making strategic business decisions.

The goal of a landing page is to get visitors to take an action, whether that’s to buy a product, sign up for an email list, start a free trial, or something else. 
But like any goal, you shouldn’t just “hope” that it’ll be achieved. You need a strategy that guides visitors toward completing the desired action. 
One way to get visitors to take action is to use mental triggers — subtle cues that nudge readers in the right direction. In this post, we’re sharing effective mental triggers you can use to optimize every element of your landing page. 
Optimizing your offer
Your offer is the most important part of your landing page. Because no matter how many optimization techniques you employ, if your target market doesn’t want your offer, your landing page will not convert. 
A quick way to test whether your offer will convert is to see if it fulfills one of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Abraham Maslow was a psychologist who theorized that there were distinct levels of basic human needs. Certain levels (like the need for food and water) had to be met first before a person would care about more sophisticated needs (like creativity). 
Maslow envisioned this hierarchy like a pyramid: 

Image source.
If you can match your offer to one of these basic human needs, you can be relatively sure it will be desired. 
For example, computer security software would fall into the “safety needs” category, like this offer from McAfee Total Protection:

Image source.
On the other hand, a university landing page inviting visitors to enroll would fall into the “esteem” or “self-actualization” category, like this offer from Capella University:

Image source.
Optimizing your copy
Your copy – the words on your landing page – is what will ultimately persuade someone to take the desired action. So, it’s very important. 
Don’t rely on sales techniques, such as using hyperbolic words like “best” or “only.” Today, most people are too familiar with marketing tactics to fall for these techniques — and may even resist them. For example, a 2013 study found that people react negatively when they sense someone is trying to persuade them in marketing. 
Instead, emphasize the free will of the reader, so they feel empowered to make their own decision and will be more likely to trust your offer. Use phrases such as “you are free to choose” to ensure readers don’t feel they are being “sold to.”
Another non-salesy (but very effective) strategy is to use storytelling in your copy. Studies have found that traditional urgency techniques (e.g. “limited time offer”) are not as effective, especially in the long-term, as showing the value of your offer through storytelling. 
To make storytelling easier, try following the simple framework created by the founder of Storybrand, Donald Miller. It consists of elements found in the hero’s journey: 
 

Character

Has a Problem

Meets a Guide

Who Gives Them a Plan

And Helps Them Avoid Failure

To End in Success

For example, this accounting firm’s landing page uses the story of the Problem their market is facing to make their message persuasive, but not salesy:

Image source.
Optimizing your headlines
To capture visitors’ attention immediately and keep them engaged on your page long enough to evaluate your offer, you need a compelling headline. Speak directly to the benefits of your product or service and how it fulfills an essential need for your prospect.
One technique to use is the focusing effect.
The focusing effect is the tendency of people to place too much emphasis on one thing at the expense of others. When it comes to your landing page headline, though, you can use this to your advantage.
Your product or service likely has many benefits, but highlighting your unique value proposition (UVP) in your headline helps prospects focus strongly on that one feature. 
JumpCrew lists several of its benefits in the copy, but highlights its UVP (more customers for less money) in the headline to grab visitors’ attention and make them hungry for more information:

Image source.
Optimizing your images
Your images are also very important when it comes to how visitors will feel when they view your landing page. 
One proven strategy is to choose images of people (instead of inanimate objects). 
The theory goes that it’s easier for people to relate to other people than to objects. But you can also take this a step further and take advantage of research that found that when the people in the images are looking at the CTA button, viewers also instinctively look at the button and become click it more often. 
For other best principles, you might find it helpful to follow an image checklist created by the 60-Second Marketer. The images must…

Look trustworthy
Demonstrate the advantages of the offer
Contrast with page design (stand out)
Express desired emotions
Make it easy to see the CTA button

For example, on the following landing page, there’s a photo of a person, who’s looking at the CTA button, and who conveys the desired emotions of the target audience: 

Image source.
Optimizing your CTA buttons
Finally, apply strategy to create CTA buttons that drive more conversions. One of the most effective strategies is to make your buttons stand out from the rest of the page as much as possible. 
According to marketing and psychology researcher, Nick Kolenda, this strategy works because of something called processing fluency. Processing fluency refers to the phenomenon that the ease with which readers understand what to do is closely related to whether they perceive the action as easy and pleasant. 
In other words, if a button is easy to spot and click, it feels easier and more pleasant to actually click. In turn, this will increase conversions.
Take a look at the following example landing page. The CTA button is orange when nothing else on the page is orange. This makes the CTA stand out more. 

Image source.
Wrap Up
Simply creating a landing page and generating traffic to it is not sufficient to increase your conversions. You must design the page with the right elements while implementing some mental triggers. Only then will your visitors be persuaded to take action and your marketing funnel start to collect more and more leads.
The post Design An Optimized Landing Page Using Mental Triggers appeared first on Campaign Monitor.